On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 22:28:05 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

On Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:43:06 +0700, Bruce
wrote:

On Sat, 22 Sep 2012 09:53:35 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 12:58:21 -0400, Wayne.B
wrote:

On Wed, 19 Sep 2012 09:15:00 -0400, WaIIy wrote:

As always, it depends on who you talk to:

They stole data. Period, no debate here.

===

I think stealing is probably the wrong word. As far as anyone knows
they did not use the data for any sort of criminal purpose. I agree
that it was wrong to collect it however, even though it was
unencrypted.

Suppose someone drives down your street and makes a log of your
address, house color, type of driveway and number of front facing
windows. Is that stealing data?

If your car is in front of your house with the keys in it, I might as
well drive it away.

It isn't quite the same thing. If you broadcast a radio signal the
courts have ruled that anyone can listen to it. That ruling dates back
to the early days of broadcast television and the days of "decoders"
to unscramble the T.V. signal.

and that isn't the same thing.

I suspect that the courts would first ask whether the signal/data was
encoded or not. If not you would have trouble proving theft.

--
Cheers,
Bruce

Just a couple of quick comments...

First, I've given several seminars about wireless communications (all forms, but the one which is the hot button is WiFi) for cruisers. I want to be certain of presenting accurate information, regardless of how the receivers choose to act on it. Up until now, I've not cited law, because I wasn't aware of any.

Skolnick has a hardon for me and my neutral position. If he were just any other slob, it would be irrelevant, but he has tremendous influence in a group of which I'm a member (SSCA, which takes the image cruisers present very seriously). I don't KNOW that he's trashed me to others there, but he's made it very plain that he holds me to be a scofflaw and whether or not case law proves it, moral law is being broken nearly universally when I connect, let alone share that signal with anyone else alongside me, through my router, left open.

There was an incident during my first time in George Town (see my log and Loose Cannon post) wherein, due to a total idiot behaving as he thought best, I have a reputation which has followed me around like a barracuda - the child's game of "telephone" has amplified and modified even the "truth" as those who heard the radio exchange themselves knew it - which was entirely mistaken, but nonetheless, I was branded a pirate, a hacker, a signal-blocker and a variety of other nefarious things, none of which is/was true.

I've heard variations on the theme all over the Bahamas, and in the yard where we've been camped, now, for 18 months. I expect that were we to venture outside those areas, we'd hear it anywhere we went. Correcting the misapprehensions is tedious at best, and having some upstream (as opposed to downstream) retellings/corrections might be useful. At a minimum, neutralizing Skolnick's position on my WiFi use would be helpful.

And, back to the first point, I owe anyone I counsel the reality, regardless of how they choose to use it. So, getting some chapter and verse, both on case and practical levels, is useful to me.

I still don't have the answer of whether a cell phone automatically makes or transfers connections, as Wired mag's article suggested. Nobody's claimed their phone (other than Skolnick) does or doesn't do that...

L8R, y'all

Skip, off to the boat for the last bits